Ex-Microsoft CTO Checks In On Patent Reform

theodp writes "Defending his controversial Intellectual Ventures in a less-than-hard-hitting CNET interview, ex-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold finds it peculiar that some people get really wound up over patents. 'People generally don't have any problem with the patent system,' quipped Myhrvold, the inventor of Microsoft's patented Television scheduling system for displaying a grid representing scheduled layout and selecting a programming parameter for display or recording, which allows you to more efficiently select shows like Elimidate for viewing."

Comments

Re:No, no, no

[Anonymous Coward]

"Clap your hands and the lights turn on? That was MY idea!"

In reality, I think that Slashdot treats patents the same way Bush is treating Social Security. Most reasonable people who know what they are talking about think Social Security is in trouble, but they think Bush's plan is far too drastic. Similarly, most reasonable people who know what they are talking about think software patents are in trouble, but they think Slashdot's plan is far too drastic. In that respect, this CTO guy is right. The two sides have to find some common ground. Otherwise, either nothing will be done or it will get worse.

Listen to Bill

[Gorath99]

If he doesn't understand why people don't like software patents, then maybe he should have paid more attention to his (ex-)boss.

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
-- Bill Gates in a 1991 internal memo (Source: http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/quotes/index.en.html#b gates91)

Re:Listen to Bill

[SeventyBang]

Typical unknowing...

First, we do not live in a democracy. A democracy is when three wolves and a sheep vote what's for supper. We are a republic.[1]

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No, that's not what Republicans believe in.

Both Democrats and Republicans stand for big:
Republicans believe in big business - generally, via supply side economics: when businesses have enough resources & needs, they'll need more people to fill those jobs, and the employed will benefit by having more money to spend, which will put more money into the economy: when the tide comes in, all of the boats float.
Democrats believe if the government gets large enough (big enough to overcome any problems with fraud, embezzlement, etc.), anyone who needs something which they aren't able to provide for themselves will eventually slide downhill to them - another form of supply-side, but using the gov't.

I tend to look at republicans, Republicans, democrats, Democrats, depending upon how fervent their beliefs and how centrist they are.
the same holds true for some form of libertarianism: libertarian, Libertarian, civil libertarian, etc.[2], (Distinguishing libertarian and Libertarian is pretty easy: Ls' positions seem to almost border on anarchy to many people not familiar with the principles and ls' positions, if people will listen long enough are essentiall for putting a leash on gov't of most levels, although pushing it to the local levels as much as possible because people have more ability to affect those who govern them - screw me and it'll be the last time you govern me. At the national level, it's "Screw 50 million of us and it'll be the last time you screwed us over."

Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general?
(and if some squid licker comes in here and says, "It's not true. I'm not of that political persuation." "Well, it's like this...you're an idiot." (Elain Benes) __________________________
__________________________

[1]But as there's a huge tie-in with gov't and economic model, we are no different. Although we claim to be a republic, we in actuality are a plutocracy - governed by the influence of money, hence the jokes:
"The Golden Rule: Those who have the gold make the rules."
"Life is like a shit sandwich; the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat."
________________________________

[2] For those who have bitter viewpoints about another's beliefs, they are unlikely to have an objective viewpoint about any form of cogent argument or debate in general. If you were given the opposite position to debate, could you support it as strongly?)
Think of it as playing chess. The reason most people are just not that good is how they analyze the board and employ lookahead: "If I move here, and they move here (making a bad move, which I can capitalize on, and I go there, and they go there (another bad move), then I can go here" instead of "If I move here and rotate the board to switch sides, what's my (their) best move?"

Someone has got an investor's money

[roman_mir]

What do you think of the complaints of how patent litigation is hurting companies? Some days it sounds like the trumped-up malpractice crisis of the '80s.

Myhrvold: Well, this is even stranger. We actually did a study on this. The overall number of lawsuits for patents is growing, but so is the overall number of patents. So explain that to me.

- this guy doesn't need anything to be explained to him, he is a crook. He did a 'study'? Let him point to the study. Let him show us that study. I bet it was nothing like a study. I bet he sit down with a couple of guys over a beer and talked about how much money they could make from litigation and that was his study.

If you then look at it and ask, what fraction of those lawsuits are due to companies that have no products, the IP-only companies--it's about 2 percent. If you look at it and say what fraction of lawsuits are due to large technology companies, it's about 2 percent.

-Look at that, he's got some numbers! I bet he just pulled those numbers out of thin air. I don't know how many companies are out there suing each other over stupid patents but I am sure it is not 2 percent. It is either something very very small like 0.0001 percent or something very large, like over 60 percent but saying it's 2 percent doesn't make any sense. It's not a real number.

---

This guy hopes to make money on litigation that much is clear. He calls himself an inventor. Inventor my ass! I 'invented' things. Plenty of things. One of them is in my russkey extension - selecting text in a browser and transforming it into a different type of text right on the page. There. An invention. I bet anyone can come up with that. And I bet it would stiffle innovation if I started suing other people for doing the same.

Re:Make the call

[Anonymous Coward]

Here he's using what's known as a strawman argument. Few people want the patent system completely abolished, just less of the junk patents, submarines or ones with tons of prior art that still take expensive court cases to shoot down. Ask people if they'd like to see the patent system reformed with less nonsense and they'd say "Hell yes!"

wound up? damn straight

[Anonymous Coward]

crap like this stifles invention because there's always gonna be a patent in the way of making a buck after making an idea work...

here is how it goes...

you've got a bunch of bucks so you group a bunch of clever guys. you look carefully at the state and direction of technology and you predict points of accreation, or 'invention'.

because it is not necessary to provide a working example you file both broad and bottle neck patents on these 'inventions'. that is you file broad ones covering the accreation and bottlenecks on the paths to the accreation.

someone else comes along and actually implements something new, funds development, brings it to market, and WHAMMO, it's raining money.

yep, i'm wound up over this crap.

i have a solution too...

there is nothing to prevent cooperative exploration of these sorts of 'inventions' with full disclosure to the public domain. in this case, when a company like M's comes along the inventor who actually made the damn thing work can make the prior art argument. This puts the advantage back in the hands of the guys who can actually implement an idea. Sure, they lose the advantage of a patent, but patents are, by far, not the only impediment to competition.

an online inventors thinktank wiki or blog or forum or whatever might scare inventors in the same way open source scares some programmers. but at the end of the day, it's the only way to break this 'patent without working example' crap.

Because real people Ignore them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm willing to bet that a great deal of patents are willingly violated.

Either the violators don't care (or more likely) don't know because the patent is something completely obvious.

Then there are the patent holders who either don't know about the violation because they're lazy and incompetent, don't know simply because it's impossible for them to check all other products / private nonreleased infringements - or they know about it but have chosen not to do anything about it.. yet.. in the hopes of suing a competitor when the competitor is large enough to be worth suing.

Then there is the patent office itself, who makes money from granting patents. It also allows stupid and frivolous patents.

The extent of the stupidity of the patent system would be very plainly reveiled if:

(1) Patent holders were *forced* to either enforce their patents or let them slip into the public domain.
(2) Patent abusers were *forced* to ensure their produts did not infringe and obtain the necessary licences if they infringed on any patents.

In an "ideal" world (from the perspective of the patent office) the above would happen. But if it did, the patent system would have to be demolished, all patents declared invalid and nothing ever patented again. Because nobody would be able to do anything - ever - and the system would collapse under the weight of millions of patents and billions of violations.

Why there are libertarian techies

[PsiPsiStar]

Quiz Question: Why is it the political leanings of most people who work in the technical arena (geeks & nerds) - not people who are key-entry operators are more libertarian in general?/i?

I'd take a shot and say it boils down to Kersy temperment. I'll give a simplified version of KT, that my dad used to use with salespeople to help them gain rapport and make a sale.

There are four types of temperments. The type of temperment you are determines how you decide whether to trust somthing (and thus, in a sales-related context, to buy it or not buy it)

The types of temperment are;
Resutls - Does the product fill a need I have.
Social - Is this what everyone else is using?
Relationship - Does someone I trust reccomend this, or do I have a relationship with the vendor.
Process - From a technical standpoint, is there a reason this product is better than other products.

Many people are a mix of more than one type.

Tech people are, overwhelmingly, process people. Outside of the technical field, process people are a minority (about 10% of the population.) Process people, from my experience, are the least authoritarian and the most likely to analyze and reject arguments put forward by 'authorities.'They look at arguements based on merits rather than social accolades.

I think this inherant distrust of both authority and social conformity predisposes people to libertarianism.

Anyone else got a theory?

(Quick note) if you ever give this temperment test among a group of close friends the reactions are pretty interesting. People naturally tend to think that their temperment is superior, except for results people (often managers), who may be used to relying on process people for input.

Modern patents and reality.

[rjh]

I'm a grad student studying computer security. Recently, I made some discoveries which have the potential to significant increase the security of Web transactions. (With luck, I'll be presenting at Black Hat 2005, so please forgive me not saying more than that until my submission gets a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.) After hearing from several Ph.Ds in the field that this idea was fairly novel, I decided it'd be good to talk to a patent lawyer. After all, I came up with it on my own time, without using any university resources, in private research unconnected to my university activities, and under my contract my discovery belongs to me.

So I did my research and found one of the better IP lawyers in the state. I walked into his office with a preprint of my academic paper, copies of existing academic articles which may be considered prior art, everything I thought he'd need.

His first question was whether I was willing to go bankrupt for this idea. "Uh... what?" I asked. That wasn't what I was expecting to hear.

The average cost for a successful patent, he explained to me, runs around $7,000. That news floored me; isn't the patent system supposed to be accessible to private citizens?

Oh, no, he told me, that's not the price. That's the price for a successful application. Right now, only about 35% of all software patents are granted. So the amortized cost of a software patent is about $20,000.

Then it starts getting even worse.

About one patent in ten will ever make their original investment back from licensing fees. The overwhelming majority of patents issued fail to recoup their initial outlay. Most patents are not used to get licensing fees; most patents are used to deny other people entry into your market. If a patent can keep other people out from your business, then it might make financial sense; but as it currently stands, since I have no business in this area of the security field... I'd be looking at one chance in ten of recouping my patent cost.

So, in other words, take the amortized cost of a patent ($20,000) and subtract from it the speculative revenues I'd be receiving ($20,000 * .1 = $2,000). What I'm left with is how much it'd cost me to get a patent, or $18,000.

That's considerably more than I make in a year as a graduate student. I could possibly, if I sold all my worldly possessions, get that much money together, but I'd probably have to declare bankruptcy as soon as it came time to pay my student loans. Hence, his question: is this idea worth going bankrupt over? Especially given the unavoidable fact that, if I did manage to beat the odds and get good licensing, all the major players would simply threaten to sue me for infringing on patents of theirs I didn't even know I'd infringed, and would offer just a no-cost cross-licensing deal that would let them have access to my patent for free, and all I'd really get out of it would be the mercy of them not suing me? ...

I'm not opposed to the existence of software patents. I think they're wildly overused, and overused in unethical ways, but there are some algorithms which are so breathtakingly new and innovative that they deserve patent protection. (RSA comes to mind as an example.)

I am opposed to a patent system which is priced far outside the capabilities of private citizens.

I am opposed to a patent system which is structured in such a way that large companies can get unlimited access to the small guy's patent portfolio just by threatening a lawsuit.

I guess you could say I'm opposed to practically every dimension of how patents are currently practiced.